As seeds of dandelions were floating in the air, I had this bright idea that I would make a pillow out of their soft, little parachutes.
A little girl with blond hair walked up to me and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make a pillow”, I replied.
“How?”, she asked.
I said, “By collecting these.”
The seeds were still flying everywhere.
After I had collected a bagful, I threw them all away after I noticed that a lot of insects were crawling in my future pillow material.
More seeds than ever were now blowing in the wind.
The sky was blue but so was I.
***
Joan Bliss and I had been walking in a forest where her father (or grandfather) had his cabin.
It was one of those tall, A-Frame structures.
It had a sign with the name BLISS.
We just kept walking through the silent, green forest.
She and I would later share the same sleeping bag when the temperature was below freezing at a farm in Longmont, Colorado called Innisfree.
That was the December night in 1973 when Comet Kohoutek was supposed to be visible in the night sky.
Everyone went outside and climbed on top of a grain silo to have a look---
Everyone, that is, except for Joan Bliss and me.
We didn’t miss a thing, because the cloud cover was so thick that night that you couldn’t see a thing.
***
Another time in another state I met a woman who was on her way to the Mardi Gras when I met her.
She had a cozy Volkswagen bus.
I could have gone with her, but I didn’t, and I can’t remember why.
Maybe I should have.
But then I would not have had the other experiences that I ended up having.
You never know where the other road might have taken you because you chose to go on the other one.
***
I met another woman in a bar.
Years later I would travel to the same tract of land where I had stayed with her, her husband, and two daughters---and try to see her again.
I’m having trouble remembering her name, but maybe before I finish it will come back to me.
But first, a slight detour that describes what happened the night before I met her.
The night before I met her I had been a passenger in a Karma Ghia that was going down a steep, winding, unpaved---and very bumpy road---when it hit a pine tree.
The driver, Jim, was unhurt, but I broke my glasses in two, and the collision of my head on the hard dashboard (even with my seat belt on) had made a cut right above my nose.
Jim drove back to the bar where we had been drinking.
I was glad that we did, because one of the pretty waitresses took care of my injury as I lay upon a white freezer in the bar’s kitchen.
The next afternoon I went to the town’s bar called the D-Bar-D.
Sitting on the front porch was a big guy who had a line of stitches going from the top of his head all the way down the left side of his face.
I asked, “What happened?”
“My head went through the truck’s windshield”.
“Where did it happen?”, I asked.
And he gave the name of the same road where I had had my accident on the same night as his.
“We must have just missed each other”, I told him, “because that’s the same road where I had my accident.”
He didn’t say much more after that, except that I found out that he had once been an engineer for the stage crew of Leon Russell.
She was one of the bartenders in the D-Bar-D.
I was sitting at the bar when she asked me my name.
I told her it was Moon (and later on I told her my complete name…Tangerine Rambler Moon).
Then she asked where I was from and I told her, “The Planet Bubble”.
I don’t know why. I just did.
And she seemed amused (or impressed).
Then she asked me to dance.
I think she said it was her break.
The song was a slow love song, the kind I liked to dance to when I wasn’t rocking and rolling.
We danced close and cheek-to-cheek.
I met her husband when she got off of work.
When he saw me (without my glasses) he said, “You’ve got acid eyes. Are you having a third-eye flash?”
To make a longer story shorter, I ended up staying on the land where she and her husband David (his name I do remember!) and their two daughters lived, which was inside their small trailer.
They were letting me sleep on their land because I was going to help them in the construction of their log cabin.
Well, one night, I left the D-Bar-D with David's wife to return to their land.
It started to rain hard.
It wasn’t safe to keep driving.
We were going to spend that night in her friend’s trailer.
There were only two beds.
It was decided that I’d sleep with David’s wife.
The next morning she told him that we had slept in the same bed, but that nothing had happened…and nothing did…but David still didn’t believe it.
His wife also didn’t believe it, either, when a few weeks later she found out that another woman had gotten pregnant by David.
***
I knew this other woman from Chicago.
She was in her early twenties.
For some reason she kept wanting to see me.
There was no physical attraction between us or any hanky-panky.
One time she invited me to go on a horse-packing trip in Central City, Colorado.
We would pay real cowhands to take us packing in.
It sounded like fun and so I agreed to go.
I ended up almost fighting with the lead cowhand after I told him that the breakfast that was made had made me sick.
He was really pissed off after I gave him this news…
Until other people on the pack-trip started throwing up, too, right before his eyes---
While we were arguing.
Reality had set in and had saved the day…and had stopped us from fighting.
IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES
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